Craving That 9-Month Break

The envelopes arrived in early August. Three big Manila envelopes jammed with forms and start-of-the-new-school-year information sheets. There was one envelope for each of our sons, all of whom are enrolled in elementary school this fall.

When I first spied the envelopes in the mailbox, I smiled the smile of a sailor spotting a seagull at the end of a long voyage across the ocean. It was a smile of hope; an end was in sight. Those envelopes confirmed what I knew in my heart. “School has to start soon,” I had said to a friend days before. “It’s time.”

Our sons needed structure back in their lives and I needed a little quiet time in mine, I explained. Summer had gone on long enough. The big family vacation was weeks ago. The swim meets, the baseball tournaments and the junior tennis matches were over. Our sons’ organized activities had dwindled to nothing. The kids were bored with the pool, bored with the dog and bored with me.

We were starting to get on each other’s nerves.

We needed to take a break. A 15-minute timeout wouldn’t do it. An overnight camp was too much. The way I figured it, what we needed was a few hours apart five days a week for, say, the next nine months. We needed school.

My sons, though, were still in vacation mode. As the calendar cleared, they stepped up their campaign to be entertained. “Can we do something tomorrow?” Jamie would ask at bedtime. “Are we going to do anything today?” Danny would ask at breakfast. Even 6-year-old Scotty chimed in. “Can I have a play date?” he would ask whenever he didn’t have one.

“Will you take us to the skate park?” they asked. “Can we have a sleepover? What about going to Water World today? Can we go here, do that, then stop and get a Jamba?” Anything but hang around the house.

They didn’t get it; the calendar was clearing for a reason. Time was running out, I told them. We had things to do. Important things. Get-ready-for-school things. We had to clean bedrooms and organize desks. We needed to sift clothes, count underwear and try on sneakers. It was time to make a list, check it twice and head to Target.

Tick, tick, tick. Didn’t they hear the school year’s clock ticking? If we didn’t start out the new school year organized, how would we ever catch up?

Hearing all those “things to do” made the kids grumpy. Now I was definitely getting on their nerves, big-time. I was Mother Grinch trying to steal summer right from under their suntanned noses.

All of that proved once again what I’ve observed for years: Summer is hard on parents. We start out in June all smiles and plans, with schedules penned on calendars. By August we’re tired. In cities and towns across the U.S., thousands of parents are at this very moment counting little square boxes on those calendars--boxes that lead from today to the first day of school.

They’re counting the number of days before they return to life as they knew it before the end-of-the-school-year parties and final band concerts last June.

Forget the calendar and the big Manila envelope. School needs to start now, I wrote in my journal one recent morning. If not today, then tomorrow. Friday at the latest.

As I wrote these words, I heard footsteps in the hall. Scotty turned the corner and crept quietly toward my desk. Without a word, he climbed into my lap and cuddled his head into the curve of my neck. We sat there for a long time because we could. I held him until he didn’t want to be held anymore, because there was nowhere else he had to be, nowhere else I had to be and nothing more important we had to do. It was summertime, and the living was easy once more.